Sep. 14--It started as a class project by a group of CSUS business students. The idea was simple enough, but scarcely heard of in 1969: a campus center to help entrepreneurs grow their small businesses.

"We were one of the few who were starting to do this," said marketing professor Dennis Tootelian, director of the Center for Small Business at California State University, Sacramento. "Small business wasn't that fashionable. It wasn't something people thought much about."

Forty years later, the Center for Small Business is a household name in the local business community and believed to be one of the largest and oldest of its type in the country.

Today, between 80 and 140 local companies get advice from the center each year, said Tootelian, who has been its director since 1973.

One of its local clients is Carvell Printing. When Carol Carvell's husband died in 2002, she worried whether she'd be able to continue the couple's Fulton Avenue printing business.

Her lender suggested she contact CSUS' business center.

"That was the start of the journey. They gave us the chance to sit down and talk about how we were doing business," said Carvel, who credits the center with helping keep her four-employee business alive.

She's consulted the center several times over the past seven years, getting advice and detailed reports on how to manage the print shop's operations.

"I'm still in business," she said. "I've got a great group of employees, and the support of (the center) has been very beneficial."

The center's services are free and open to any company that meets the SBA's definition of a small business. Generally, Tootelian said, that means a firm with fewer than 500 employees and less than $20 million in sales.

Each company in the program is assigned to a team of CSUS business students, primarily seniors and graduate students majoring in accounting, marketing, operations or information systems.

Working under a faculty member as part of a case-study class, the teams spend about 70 hours visiting the company's workplace, gathering information and producing detailed recommendations such areas as accounting and marketing.

The free services cover all aspects of operations except taxes, legal advice and loan packaging.

More than 70 businesses got help last semester, and there's a waiting list of 20 to 40 companies for the fall term, Tootelian said.